Generations have grown up knowing that the equation E=mc2 changed the shape of our world, but never understanding what it actually means, why it was so significant, and how it informs our daily lives today--governing, as it does, everything from the atomic bomb to a television's cathode ray tube to the carbon dating of prehistoric paintings. In this book, David Bodanis writes the "biography" of one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history--that the realms of energy and matter are inescapably linked--and, through his skill as a writer and teacher, he turns a seemingly impenetrable theory into a dramatic human achievement and an uncommonly good story.

Generations have grown up knowing that the equation E=mc2 changed the shape of our world but never understanding what it actually means and why it was so significant. Here, Bodanis writes the biography of this great discovery and turns a seemingly impenetrable theory into a dramatic and accessible human achievement. Bodanis begins by introducing the science and scientists forming the backdrop to Einstein's discovery...

A deeply fascinating, engaging, and highly accessible explanation of Einstein's equation, using everyday life to explore the principles of physics.

Lavishly illustrated, fascinating and accessible introduction to Einstein's relativity for general readers, school students and undergraduates.

In one of the most exciting and accessible explanations of The Theory of Relativity in recent years, Professors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw go on a journey to the frontier of 21st century science to consider the real meaning behind the iconic sequence of symbols that make up Einstein's most famous equation, exploring the principles of physics through everyday life.

Einstein's energy-momentum relation is applicable to particles of all speeds, including the particle at rest and the massless particle moving with the speed of light. If one formula or formalism is applicable to all speeds, we say it is 'Lorentz-covariant.' As for the internal space-time symmetries, there does not appear to be a clear way to approach this problem. For a particle at rest, there are three spin degrees of freedom. For a massless particle, there are helicity and gauge degrees of freedom. The aim of this book is to present one Lorentz-covariant picture of these two different space-time symmetries. Using the same mathematical tool, it is possible to give a Lorentz-covariant picture of Gell-Mann's quark model for the proton at rest and Feynman's parton model for the fast-moving proton. The mathematical formalism for these aspects of the Lorentz covariance is based on two-by-two matrices and harmonic oscillators which serve as two basic scientific languages for many different branches of physics. It is pointed out that the formalism presented in this book is applicable to various aspects of optical sciences of current interest.